The article, by Franklin Foer, published on Slate at 5:36 p.m., is titled “Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?”

This is big. So big you’ll get sick of big.

Believe me.

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UPDATE: This is a very long article, and I hadn’t finished it when I posted this. Now that I’ve finished it, I seems extremely likely to me that this is the information that Harry Reid was referencing in his letter to Comey yesterday. If so, this is just stunning–that the FBI has withheld this information from the public, yet Comey waited a nanosecond after learning of the emails on Weiner’s computer to announce it to the public even without knowing what they actually were.

Did Comey know last Friday that this news was about to break? Did that play into his decision to make that information public?

The plot sickens. In any event, it does seem that the info Reid wanted so badly to become public, now has, as of tonight. This is the “explosive information” that he was referencing in that letter. Near the end of the Foer article, he discusses the role that two NYT reporters, Eric Lichtblau an Steven Lee Myers, who also were chasing the story, played in the actual substantive events in September when they made their investigation known to Alpha Bank. And the Times reporters were in contact with Foer today, right after the Slate article was published. There should be a major story on this in tomorrow’s Times; I would think so, anyway.

But I hope one of these journalists, or another one, asks the computer scientists they’ve been working with if they think there’s a way to determine whether the same crowd that is communicating via the setup described in the article also played role in the appearance of tens of thousands of Huma Amedin’s personal emails on the hard drive of Weiner’s computer. And whether that is why Trump suddenly late last summer started claiming that Weiner had access to Abedin’s State Dept. emails.

Tomorrow should be an interesting day.

Added 10/31 at 10:14 p.m.

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SECOND UPDATE: Reader Noni Mausa and I just exchanged these comments in the Comments thread this morning:

Noni Mausa / November 1, 2016 10:06 am

I have wondered for some years how long it will be till computer files, images, and emails lose their evidential status, given the expanding abilities of hackers — the digital equivalent of planting drugs or stolen goods in someone’s home is becoming rapidly more plausible.

As for the NYT article, I of course have no firsthand knowledge, (how many of us do? that’s why we have reporters). but the bona fides of the hacker-hunters sound bona fide to me. If messages of some sort were passing between a large Russian bank and Trump’s headquarters, with their frequency responsive to electoral events stateside, at the very least this seems an indication of common interests, whether financial or political. Even if they were “innocently” tied to ordinary financial dealings, this is still of deep concern when the presidency comes into it.

I dare say, since the dedicated mutual traffic on the server on Trump’s end has now gone dark, we will probably not be able to ever know the details of the Trump-Alfa conversation. Stay tuned for another half-dozen conspiracy theories, of which one, the least plausible, will be true, plus at least two major motion pictures.

Me / November 1, 2016 10:26 am

Wow. Noni, you raise a really interesting point about the Trump server. Based on all that stuff reported about retrieving stuff from Clinton’s server, I think the FBI COULD retrieve info from that server.

Soooo … if this is the stuff Reid WAS referring to by “explosive information” that the FBI is sitting on, has the FBI sought a search warrant to confiscate the server? If nor, why not? And if the FBI did NOT know of the server–something that seems unlikely, given that at least one of the scientists who provided the info to Foer, the Slate journalist, apparently works as a contractor for the FBI, and given that these scientists have been trying since last June to attract some media attention to their Reddit posts–will the FBI NOW IMMEDIATELY REQUEST A SEARCH WARRANT TO CONFISCATE THE SERVER? AND WILL THE FBI, UM, ANNOUNCE THAT, BEFORE THE ELECTION?